6 Networking Mistakes And How to Avoid Them – Gill Corkindale – HarvardBusiness.org

f you’ve been laid off in recent months, you’re in excellent company. Plenty of qualified and experienced managers are now having to develop strategies to find their next job. But where to start? If you were my coaching client, I would simply say: network, network, network.

And yet among my clients, networking is often an underdeveloped skill. Take Jerry, a 40-year-old business development manager in a financial services firm. His role is to build the business in Europe, so he has to make industry contacts, speak at conferences and look for new client relationships. He is now at a point in his career where he has to build internal networks, but instead of recognising that he is already a master networker, the very mention of the word makes him shudder. Why? Because in his mind, networking is associated with self-promotion, politics and inappropriate favours.